Loopholes snare many parked cars

More than 3,000 towed vehicles wait for their owners behind the locked gates of the downtown auto pound on Lower Wacker Drive, where each day city crews reel them in by hook or by crook.

Certainly one of the worst experiences of vehicle ownership is that heart-pounding moment when you discover your car or truck isn't on the street where you parked it, yet many drivers bring that fate upon themselves. They park by fire hydrants, in bus-stop zones and other clearly marked no-parking areas.

The "me-first" behavior can jeopardize safety and the ability of traffic to move through the congested downtown.

But many other drivers, lulled into thinking they are legally parked because of the creatively deceptive placement of some city signs, fall victim to a towing trap that exists across downtown. A few decoyed parking meters on one block, several more meters on another block, it all adds up to big bucks for the city generated by the Department of Streets and Sanitation's blue tow trucks.

And readers of this column--as well as Getting Around himself, whose car got the towing hook last week--say it's time City Hall is called on this entrapment scam.

Getting Around reader Christopher Pankonen of Willowbrook explains how it works at one location. Pankonen's vehicle was not towed, but he observed the trap while he was working a construction job recently.

Getting Around's car--along with up to 20 other vehicles--was towed Thursday from a metered parking space on Desplaines Street just north of Jackson Boulevard.

A city sign on a pole directly over the parking space and two other meters listed the following restrictions: No parking 6 p.m. to 7 a.m. weekdays, and no parking at any hour Saturdays and Sundays except for vehicles displaying a special city permit. A sticker on the parking meter said parking was allowed 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays through Fridays.

At the corner of Desplaines and Adams Street, there are two signs warning that vehicles will be ticketed and towed between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. Thursdays for street cleaning.

Does that amount to a fair warning for vehicles parked in the three metered spaces almost 200 feet away on the other end of the block at Desplaines and Jackson? About 20 vehicles were towed from the block, a city transportation spokesman said.

But after being informed that a story on the bait-and-tow practice would appear, Streets and Sanitation Department spokesman Matt Smith on Friday downgraded the total to eight vehicles towed.

A city auto pound attendant, who would not give his name and wasn't wearing a city ID, said: "We are not allowed to touch your vehicle unless the street-cleaning signs are posted corner to corner."

That would serve as adequate notice, but transportation officials said those really aren't the rules. The sign-posting guidelines do not specify where signs must be displayed, said Brian Steele, spokesman for the Chicago Department of Transportation. The ordinance states a block that is up to 600 feet long, for example, must have two parking restriction signs. But they can be posted anywhere, a loophole sure to generate a lot of tows.